


The kids aren't alright

by flowerrichie



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, High School, M/M, Post-IT (2017), Post-Pennywise (IT)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24696730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerrichie/pseuds/flowerrichie
Summary: Maybe Richie should, at least, tell Eddie to not feel guilty for being his designed weakness. But maybe he exposed himself enough for Eddie to pick all the pieces and put them together. He's smart: there's only one reason why a monstrous clown should use him to taunt Richie's mind and break his heart.Probably both the boys know that, even the small one that he's keeping closer, uncaring of the implications of all that.Richie thinks, he likes it.or, Richie and Eddie talk about Neibolt and share a mutual trauma.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	The kids aren't alright

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. It's my first IT story, here, on ao3 and my first public fic in a long time in general.  
> I've wrote a couple of other fics that didn't feel right and that I've deleted, or just left dying somewhere on my smarthphone/laptop, half written.  
> Usually, I'm a person who enjoys AUs, to be honest, so writing a canon fic it's kinda weird, considering I read them just if they are really, truly good. Apparently, I'm very selective when it cames to fanfictions and most of the times I feel bad for that, because there are plenty of stories, out there, that people say are amazing and that I can't truly enjoy for a reason or another, despite what the popular opinion says about them.  
> Also, my English level is very basic and I've mostly learned it by myself, reading and listening to music, which means this fic is quite simple and that you'll probably find a couple (or a lot) of grammar mistakes. If anyone is up to read and eventually fix my next ones, if they like how I write and if there will be next ones, I'll be over the moon.  
> Thank you for everything and hope you'll enjoy it. It is a sad one.

  
  


**T** here are many things that Eddie knows well, almost like they are part of him. Of who he is, or who he turned in to in the past couples of years. 

He knows his mother's compliant tone whenever she has to agree to something that she doesn't really like, or all his friends favorite ice cream flavors that he could anticipate every time they go buy them by the ice cream parlor during summer. He knows Bill's favorite book and the way Mike smiles, closing his eyes and showing his white teeth in contrast with his dark skin, that glows like pure gold when they are still by the quarry during the sunset. He sees Ben turning red so many times, whenever someone brings Beverly up, that he could definitely pick the exact shadow of pink in a color palette. It's like knowing when Stan will roll his eyes, predictably, every time Eddie and Richie pretend to argue over something stupid. 

There are many things, now, that the former knows about the latter of the mentioned pair: among them there's definitely the sound of Richie's heavy breath in the middle of a quiet night, while he should sleep, but he can't or doesn't want to.

They are in Bill's room, where the owner is sharing his bed with Stan, while the others are sprawled on the floor, with heavy blankets, a thin mattress  _ for emergencies _ that Bill's mom brought just for their nights at their place, and a couple of sleeping bags. Mike was the first to say he could have slept on the floor, too nice to ask for the bed or the mattress, and placing himself over a couple of plaids and his own sleeping bag. Richie wasn't really fond of following his example, because he's too tall and he always has back pain, but eventually left the space on the mattress to Ben and Eddie. The first tried to switch, while the second assured they slept on the floor last time, so they had every right to use the mattress  _ for once _ . Richie wasn't sure he had a point, not at all actually, but after a couple of prickly exchanges in which Eddie kept his annoyed mask on and insisted that he was right, Richie let it go and went for the floor. 

Now, he's laying on his sleeping bag, under a ton of blankets, while he uses the mattress as a pillow, feeling the covers under his cheek. 

Eddie, near him, knows he's awake: he can hear his breath, but also his fingers touching the texture of the blanket they are badly sharing in an exasperated way, like he would do while awake, during the day. Eddie doesn't say anything, knowing that maybe Richie doesn't need him to say anything. He gets closer just a bit, instead, and asks himself if Richie knows that Eddie is awake too. No one of them says anything anyway. 

Richie keeps fidgeting with the texture of the blanket and the other gets used to that almost unnoticeable movement, melting with the other boys' breathes, as he's about to maybe finally fall asleep. Except that, at some point, eyes closed and dozing out, Eddie is called back in the quiet room by an abrupt movement. 

In the half darkness of the room -the only lights coming from the hallway behind the ajar door- he feels Richie uncovering himself from the blankets and slipping away from his friends' proximity. The side previously occupied by the tall boy is hit by the cold of the new unusual emptiness, but when he lifts his head from the pillow to have a better look, he can only spot Richie getting up and walking away from him, without even looking for his glasses left on the dresser near Bill's bed. The door opens a moment after and the figure -now a dark shape- shows himself for a short moment, on his back, before disappearing behind the wooden surface. Eddie falls back with his head on the pillows and waits. 

He doesn't know how much he really waits, or what exactly, because, at some point, it's clear that he won't fall asleep any soon and Richie didn't go to the bathroom, how initially Eddie thought. Or at least, he guesses, because it is taking him  _ forever _ . 

Facing the ceiling, his back against the mattress and Ben's heavy breath next to him, the boy keeps waiting. He keeps his eyes wide open, hands laying on his stomach, even though he observes something that is completely pitched black. 

It's a couple of minutes later, maybe five, or ten -he's not sure, he only knows it's been so damn long for a night piss- that Mike turns on his sleeping back and the unexpected sound pushes Eddie on his feet, leaving the blanket next to Ben. 

He walks slowly and carefully, following the barely visible light coming from the hallway and being careful to not trip on anything in that familiar but still strange house, starting with the mess of covers that Richie left in the place he occupied next to the emergency mattress. Once opening the door, he's quick to leave the room and close the entrance for the other boys to keep sleeping. 

Eddie starts wandering around the corridors of the second floor, throat close and checking every room (except the Denbroughs one, it would seem inappropriate), even Georgie's one. There's a moment in which a shiver goes down his spine, memories trying to have the best of his mind with the darkness of the house in the night gives it strength and power over his head and body, shaking like a leaf. He takes a breath and  _ there's nothing to worry about _ he says to himself. He has to repeat it three times, before Eddie accepts it for real, not like a sort of useless matra, and closes the door of the room in a rush again, pushed more by the desperation to breathe again. 

He needs a second to keep up again with his lungs again, before he leaves the memory of Georgie -and what it brings back from unpleasant events buried in his memories- and looks for Richie somewhere else. He's glad to have a distraction. 

He searches for the boy in every room, whispering his name in the silent night and checking even the ground floor, after going down the house cracking stairs. Bill always knows how to avoid making any noise going up and down, but he also lives there, while Eddie doesn't. So he moves uncertainly in his light blue pajama and feet covered only in a pair of white socks. 

Then, there's one moment in which he sees it. He just arrived in the kitchen, looking curiously around the dark room where everything seems exceptionally quiet, giving the boy some growing concern, when he's about to turn around and maybe looking for Richie in the bathroom in the ground floor, but he sees it: the cloud of smoke through the window behind the counter and instantly Eddie's heart jumps. He takes a deep breath, not even knowing he kept it for almost all the time since Georgie's room, but too scared to feel and truly enjoy the feeling of relief mixed to joy that  _ wants _ to fill his chest. 

The boy walks carefully towards the door in the Denbroughs' kitchen that leads to the porch in the back garden, turning the doorknob and pushing past the entrance with just one thought about it. For a moment, he thinks he should just have gone back to Bill's room, trying to have a good sleep with the others, but then the second after his mind formed this idea he's already in the open, feeling the cold hitting his face like a knife and the darkness of the night embracing him. 

Richie's eyes land on his figure straight away, even in the semi obscurity and without glasses (he says he can recognize shapes, but not details), when he takes another drag of the cigarette from his sitting position on the comfortable outdoor couch that the Denbroughs brought the past summer with two coordinated armchairs. 

"Hey" Eddie whispers, approaching, but not sure he can sit. So he moves from a foot to the other. 

"Hey" Richie replies back, but his tone is  _ almost _ amused, while his feet are popped against the coffee table in front of him. Bill's mom would be fuming, probably calling him  _ Richard _ and giving him a long stare. As Eddie thinks about it, the red light coming from the cigarette the other boy is smoking is the only thing really enlightening his face, while the moon light does a poor job during that summer night. "It took you long" 

"What?" 

"I know you were awake" Richie confesses and Eddie recognizes a shrug. "I thought you would have come looking for me a couple of minutes ago, at least" 

Eddie frowns and he embraces his body, when he decides to sit on the couch next to his friend without asking. He leaves a couple of inches anyway. "Did you want me to come?" 

Richie shrugs pretending to not care and gives the other a long stare. Probably because he needs to properly study him without his thick glasses. "But I knew you were awake. And I know you're anxious" 

Eddie gets comfortable on his seat, a couple of inches between him and the smoking boy, whose free hand is playing nervously with the hem of his shorts. Now, he's looking in front of him, but it's clear he's waiting for any kind of reply from the last arrived. "I don't think you shouldn't tell anxious people that they are anxious. I'm sure it's counterproductive" 

Richie chuckles. "I have to be honest with my friends" 

"No, you're just incapable of keeping your mouth shut" Eddie says and he knows what Richie is going through with the medication and the doctors that his parents insist to talk with. Maggie and Went Tozier are nice people, caring and loving, but they're also tired of being called from school because their son doesn't know how to behave. And, as much as they try, teachers seem to not accept the fact that Richie constantly needs  _ to do _ and  _ to say _ isn't something that depends on him most of the time. He hates meds, he let Eddie understand it in the past couple of years, but it's the only way he can turn off his hyperactivity and give people space without him constantly rambling, or just ruining the mood. "Couldn't you sleep?" 

Richie doesn't answer and doesn't move for a long heavy moment, in which Eddie studies his barely visible profile, from the shape of his nose to his parted mouth that now takes another drag from the cigarette in his hand. Then, he shrugs imperceptibly. "Not really"

Eddie purses his lips. "Is that why you're smoking again? I thought you stopped" 

Turning, Richie flashes him a smile, an amused one that says more than thousands words. The other boy observes it and, even in the darkness, it seems sincere. "I did. Those are Bill's, in fact, but he told me where he hides them for, you know, emergencies" 

"Is that an emergency?" 

"Maybe" 

There's a short moment of silence, that seems longer than it actually is, in which the only noise is Richie aspiring from his stick. Eddie leans more comfortably on the couch, turning his body towards the friend. 

"Wanna talk about it?" Eddie's tone is sincere and truly concerned, maybe even scared, and Richie isn't surprised. Not at all. He may seem like he's the loyal and protective one of the pair, always ready to jump in the other rescue, which is in fact true, but Eddie is braver than his petite and constantly angry imagine let others see. "Or we can not talk about it, if that's what you want" 

Richie purses his lips, taking one last drag, before he pushes his finished cigarette in the hash tray on the coffee table. After that, he falls back against the couch and looks at Eddie. His dark face is serious when he simply says "It's summer". 

The other flinches a bit and he hopes for Richie to not notice it, because a moment after he's pushing all the bad thoughts away. Maybe talking isn't the right thing. Or maybe it is and he's just being selfish. And  _ scared.  _ But what if Richie isn't talking about what Eddie thinks he's talking about? It could be a misunderstanding. 

"I know it is" he plays dumb, when he shouldn't. He knows they have to talk about it for their sake. "Days are hot as fuck, nights humid until you shake in cold sweat" 

"You know what I'm talking about" Richie states and Eddie's hands start nervously playing with the hem of his shirt. The tall boy, curls darker than usual in that night light, looks in front of him. "But we don't have to. I'm not sure it's even healthy or-" 

"Maybe it is" Eddie interrupts into an irrational moment, in which he's not sure about what he's saying, if he can face it.  _ It _ . But Richie seems suddenly so tired and worn out that Eddie is invested by mixed emotions and a level of empathy that he doesn't easily try to accept. But not that night. "Healthy, I mean… I'm sure an analyst would tell you to talk about it. Open up" 

"You don't want me to  _ open up _ " Richie says quietly, he cracks a smile, but it's forced.

"Maybe not" Eddie agrees, when he moves himself closer to the other boy on the couch. Richie throws him an unsure and confused stare. "But, you know, sometimes what we want it's not what we have to do" a breath. "I mean, we didn't want to fight a scary clown in the sewers years ago, but Bill was so invested in finding his brother that we knew we just had to do it" 

"Yeah" Richie whispers with a sigh, hearing Eddie's hint and the other nods. Their shoulders are one against the others now. "I think about it a lot lately. It's because it's summer, you know"

The other nods again, but stays quiet, sure that Richie will keep talking if he doesn't say anything. They both swallow. 

"I don't like to think about it, I stress myself when I do it" the boy admits and is he shaking? Eddie glances to his hands on his lap, fingers nervously playing with the hem of the shorts he's wearing, a light blue ones. "Sometimes, I don't think about it for days and I don't even realize it until something happens, or catches my attention, and I'm quickly aware of what my mind is trying to remember" Richie's voice cracks. "But it's summer now. Everything remembers me of  _ that one _ and I don't want to live my life waking up and remembering every day a clown trying to kill us" 

"I know"

"I-" Richie stops and blinks a couple of times. He takes a breath, he squeezes his shorts and takes a breath again. A deep one. "I hate it. I hate how it makes me feel, how I alway look around and how darkness stucks me into a paranoid state that I can hardly move on from. I panic. Just panic in my own room. In my own house, even when my parents are around. And I don't want to feel like this anymore. I'm  _ so _ tired of it" 

Eddie's hand falls suddenly on Richie's one, busy giving his cloth a hell of a time, trying to stop it through his presence. It's like  _ I'm here and I know what you're talking about  _ and Eddie hopes for the other to not misunderstand it for  _ you're making me nervous, stop it _ . When the tall boy looks up and the other just ties their fingers together to underline the meaning behind the gesture, Richie's eyes are wide in surprise for a moment, until they soften. 

"I know" it's a whisper, the one coming from Eddie, and then he squeezes his friend's warm hand in a reassuring way. "I know every feeling. And it's hard. I know it's hard. The fear, the constant need to watch your back when you're alone, the nightmares. I always ask myself if he will come back early, you know, or if he's watching us to finish what he started. We've been lucky, Rich, nothing more. We've been lucky kids that were smart enough to stick together again when It tried to divide us. And maybe he's doing it again" Richie gives him a short scared look, before focusing on their hands. He puts his free one over their linked ones and squeezes them. Eddie didn't see Richie so vulnerable in such a long time, probably since  _ that _ summer, because he's someone who rarely let his feelings out. Showing them would be admitting a weakness that fights with Richie need to build his own character and be accepted for what he wants the other to see. He's full of uncertainties. "This thing that we decided to not talk about what happened… I'm not sure it's good for us" 

"But you agreed" Richie remembers him, letting his fingers slipping over Eddie's and his other hand joined together. He would never do something like that in other contexts, or in the daylight. "You agreed that we should have moved on" 

"We also swore with blood that we would come back in twenty seven years, when we suppose It will appear again" Eddie says under his breath, but Richie hears anyway. "It's an open chapter and we know that. We agreed on don't talk about it, because those twenty seven years we think we have are our safe zone and we don't want to waste them worrying" 

"We're doing it anyway" 

"Yeah. It seemed a good idea, at the time, but now I'm not sure anymore" it's a quiet confession. "We're living a shitty trauma all alone, when maybe we should just console each other. Or tell the other that we all together in this, I don't know"

Richie's lips purses. "You sound like a therapist" 

Eddie sighs. "I've been… I've been to the school counselor, actually" the other's head snaps at the sound of the words and before he can say anything, eyes weirdly watered under the night light, the small boy keeps rambling. "It was a couple of times and I never told her anything about what happened. Not explicitly, at least. I didn't want her to think I was crazy and call my mother. I would have been locked up straight away. It was mostly about me and my feelings, you know, that kind of shit. Nobody knows about it" 

"Your feelings aren't shit" Richie says seriously, which is something that doesn't happen frequently. He tries to be composed. "Why didn't you tell me" 

"Why didn't you tell me about how you felt" Eddie's frowns, not really accusing Richie, but just stating a fact. "We think if we don't talk about it, it will go away. But it will just settle deeper. And because we were dumb enough to decide to not talk about it, because we understandly didn't like to talk about it, we had to improvise with self hatred and pain. The school counselor was my compromise, but maybe we should just have a talk to each other"

"You think would talking have helped?" Richie asks. " _ Will  _ it help?" 

Eddie thinks about it for a long moment, hand warm between Richie's and heart pounding fast on his chest. "It probably won't help us feeling better  _ per se _ , but maybe loneliness isn't the answer either. We may not have a solution, but darkness will be less scary if we wouldn't just close in ourselves. Am I making sense?" 

There's a long pause. Richie looks at Eddie -or the latter thinks so, because he's not sure he can properly see him without his nerdy glasses- while his hands are around the boy's one with a strong desperate grip and his eyes are screaming in the quiet of the night. Eddie isn't sure whose heartbeat is the one he's listening to, probably it's his own, but he wouldn't be surprised to know it's Richie's. Then sometimes that he didn't predict happens and it leaves him surprised for a couple of seconds -genuine stupor- when Richie pushes himself against Eddie's shoulder, hair tickling the other neck and face buried deep against the body he's gripping.

Eddie doesn't relax straight away, because Richie is someone touchy but only when he says so and usually it happens when they are extremely in danger, or in a deep fun mood. If Richie is scared, he'll make sure he will keep people close, under his arm or near him, probably hoping to get and give comfort. If Richie is happily laughing, he will briefly hug or patting, sometimes even caressing with a light grin on his lips. Usually the person of his attention is always Eddie, which doesn't complain and that now finds himself embracing the tall boy with his free arm, like a natural reflex. 

He closes his eyes, shutting them off and listening to the sound of Richie's breath that heavy and irregular tells Eddie he's crying. He never cried in front of anyone except for his friends and only during their life changing experience in the sewers years ago: Eddie remembers how they tried to save Stan from It under the shape of a creepy woman with deformed mouth full of sharp bloody teeth and how it took Richie just a moment of Stan's panic and screams to find himself crying by reflex. It was fear, the pure one of a child in a situation bigger than him. Eddie isn't sure he saw Richie crying since then, not in public at least. 

"I know it's hard" the small one whispers, like a secret, when a tear falls from his cheek and on the other boy's head resting on him. "I know. And I'm so sorry"

A sniff against Eddie's t-shirt, a moment longer for Richie to lean on his friend like he will slip away anytime soon and then moves away. Just a bit, enough to look in Eddie's eyes, while gripping the collar of his shirt with force. 

"W-when we went in N-Neibolt" Richie says and then sighs, eyes big and crying tears one after another. Eddie doesn't think that his face must be different. "I sound like Bill" he comments quickly, before focusing again on the small boy and taking a deep breath, like he's starting a marathon. "When we went inside the house in Neibolt Street, the first time, when we got divided and you broke your arm, I saw you. I mean, I thought I saw you, but it wasn't really you. It was trying to trick me using you and I fell for it. It was horrible, Eds, I felt so bad and I thought-" 

"You need to breathe, Rich" Eddie interrupts, noticing how the boy's mouth is so busy talking, that he's forgetting to take a breath between a word and another. He doesn't want him to pass out because he's too focused on telling Eddie what happened years ago, when he can do it just slower. For both their sakes. "What are you talking about" 

Richie does as the other said and takes an initial breath. 

"In Neibolt, when me and Bill were upstairs and you fell downstairs, before we came to help you. I saw you. Twice" Eddie's lips purses, confusion on his wet face. Richie's grip gets a little bit stronger around his t-shirt, until he let's the cloth go, slipping his hands on his friend's shoulders and the base of his neck. He touches Eddie like he's not sure he's real. "The first time, It wanted to divide me from Bill because, you know, alone we were weaker. So I saw you and I thought it was really you, at least at the beginning,  _ stupidly _ , and then he attacked me and he tried to make me think you were... That you were there, covered in blood and-" a pause, like the thought of what he's remembering costs him all his strength. Two tears fall contemporary from Richie's eyes and down his freckled cheeks. "And you were  _ dying _ . It was horrible, I don't want to feel like that never again. I don't want to see you  _ like that _ ever again" 

The end is a whisper that forces Eddie to get aways closer, until they are forehead against forehead. Richie's eyes move down, avoiding to face the other's hurt and watery stare. Eddie shakes him by grabbing his shoulders. 

"Look at me" he says in the quiet night on the Denbroughs porch, hearing only their heavy and fatigued breaths cutting the silence, between a word and another. It's like a déjà vu that they both remember very well, when they think of that first time, switched places and a clown hunting them then like he's still hunting them now. Slowly, Richie does as he has been told. Eddie swallows. "I'm fine. You are fine. We're the portraits of two healthy teenagers, enjoying summer holidays from high school, who aren't dead at all. I wouldn't ever want for you to see that. You shouldn't have. It's not fair, Rich. And I'm sorry that we had to go to the sewers that summer just because we loved Bill and we wanted to help him to find Georgie. Like I'm sorry that I didn't come to you to talk first. I noticed you were…  _ Off _ and I just let the selfishness have the best of me and I'm really sorry. For everything, Rich. You protected me  _ so _ many times and now I feel like I've let you down"

Eyes now closed and foreheads pressed together, Richie would like to tell Eddie that he doesn't blame him for anything, not even for being the reason for restless nights and nightmares during the days. He would also like to tell him that he knows why It picked Eddie, among all his friends, to hurt him. He knows it all too well. But he doesn't say anything, because he doesn't know if he can at all, if he's  _ able _ to, or if it's because of the arms slipping around him in a full warm embrace, that leaves him surprised. 

There's silence for the rest of the time. Maybe Richie should, at least, tell Eddie to not feel guilty for being his designed weakness. But maybe he exposed himself enough for Eddie to pick all the pieces and put them together. He's smart: there's only one reason why a monstrous clown should use him to taunt Richie's mind and break his heart. 

Probably both the boys know that, even the small one that he's keeping closer, uncaring of the implications of all that. 

Richie thinks, he likes it. He likes the way Eddie's hugging and making sure he's alright just by touching, caressing his back and sometimes moving Richie's hair away from his face. It's a weird and uncomfortable position, tangled together on an uncomfortable garden couch, but it's at the same time nice and familiar and it leads him to a deserved unvolutary sleep. 

It's Bill's mom's voice to wake them up -hours late, but still in the early morning- with bodies burning in pain, from the weird positions they took into the humid summer night spent outside. Then she sends them back inside for a couple of other hours of sleep, ignoring the cigarette in the harsh tray and the boys' red cheeks as they silently recognize how close their bodies were tangled as they get up. She attempts a smile, but the two just walk past her with their heads down. 

They don't talk for the whole walk towards the upper floor and, once inside the house, wandering for the corridors, they exchange just quick and quiet stares. At least, until they lay down in Bill's room -where there's already a soft morning light coming through the window- and their eyes meet again, this time without leaving the other. 

Richie cracks an unsure shy smile and Eddie knows they aren't alright, but he takes the boy's hand in his and maybe they can work something out from the web of fears they silently got stuck into in the last couple of years. 

And the next time in which they will fall asleep and wake up again, they'll make sure to ask the others how they're feeling about the clown who's silently hunting all their nights and day. Because it's clear that it is a shared trauma and there’s no time to keep ignoring it. 


End file.
